Gabby Logan
Gabby Logan (born Gabrielle Nicole Yorath; 24 April 1973) is an English television presenter and radio presenter, as well as a former Wales international gymnast. She currently hosts programmes for BBC Sport, mainly focusing on football. Early life Logan was born to former Welsh international footballer and manager Terry Yorath and his wife Christine in Leeds when Yorath was playing for Leeds United. Due to her father's career, Logan had to move around much in her youth, as her father played for a number of British teams and Canadian side Vancouver Whitecaps.She attended Bishop Ullathorne RC School in Coventry,Cardinal Heenan High School, and Notre Dame Sixth Form College in Leeds and read Law at the College of St Hild and St Bede, Durham. Logan played netball for the school and at university, competed at high jump, but the peak of her sporting career was when she gained eighth place in rhythmic gymnastics representing Wales at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. She had to retire from gymnastics aged 17 due to sciatica. Logan became interested in football during her regular attendance of her father's matches, to which her mother went out of a 'sense of duty'. On 11 May 1985, she was in the crowd at Valley Parade when the Bradford City stadium fire happened. She, along with her brother and sister, had left the stand only moments before the fire took hold and watched the disaster taking place. She runs and plays golf and is a supporter of Newcastle United stretching back to her time at Durham University, where her then boyfriend was a childhood fan. She remembers her first match as Newcastle's 1-0 Premier League victory over Everton on 25 August 1993 and made visits by air or rail to St. James' Park throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, including Newcastle's 5-0 win over Manchester United on 20 October 1996. Early career After university she presented on Metro Radio in Newcastle, from where she was offered a job as a presenter on Sky Sports in 1996, working there until 1998, when she began working at ITV. In 1999, she participated in a celebrity special in the second season of Fort Boyard. Logan stepped in for Melanie Sykes on 6 July 2004 when she went on maternity leave partway through Series 3 of the ITV game show The Vault. Logan's career came to notice when she fronted On the Ball for ITV. Logan was one of a small number of female sports presenters to have made the transition to terrestrial television. After ITV lost the terrestrial rights to the Premier League, she has presented ITV's UEFA Champions League football coverage, including the 2005 and 2006 finals, between A.C. Milan and Liverpool, and Arsenal and Barcelona, respectively. She has also presented other programmes including ITV's 2005 Super Bowl coverage. In one episode as a guest on BBC1's They Think It's All Over she asked if she could take part in the Feel The Sportsman round as an all-girls team, donning the blindfold along with Jo Brand instead of regular captain David Gower. Pauline McLynn guesting on Gary Lineker's team also got offered and accepted a rare chance for the guests to take up the blindfold challenge. Logan took part in the celebrity version of Stars in Their Eyes as Sharleen Spiteri of Texas - although she lost to Debra Stephenson, Spiteri sent flowers to congratulate her on her performance. She writes regularly for The Times''newspaper, and has also done a photo shoot for men's magazine ''GQ. After the birth of her twins and the return of Steve Rider to ITV, she was given a co-host role. This included ITV's coverage of the 2006 World Cup, on which she later commented: "I interviewed David Beckham, but I didn't see a single game. It dented my confidence and made me question my abilities. If you've got ambition and you want to do well, it's obviously disappointing." In August 2006 when Champions League returned to ITV, Logan was not present and it was announced that Rider would front with Jim Rosenthal as deputy. Under the ITV team section of the ITV football website, it announced that Logan would front ITV's UEFA Cup coverage. In September 2006, it was announced that ITV had banned Logan from competing in the fourth series of the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing, which began on 7 October 2006 (though she did appear in the studio audience at least once). She was told that she would appear in rival ITV series Dancing on Ice, which returned on 13 January 2007, but refused to take part. Category:1973 births